Alcohol’s effects include:
1. Reduces empathy
2. Disinhibition: act on pre-existing wishes
3. Beer goggles (affects the perception of symmetry)
4. Disguise hesitancy
5. Allloplastic defense (drink's fault)
6. Long-term memory
7. Stereotypical grandiosity (alcohol myopia)
Alcoholism serves several psychological purposes effectively.
This is why alcoholism is so intractable (difficult to get rid of or treat) and why recidivism is as high as 60% within the first year after rehab.
1. Palliative
Helps the alcoholic to cope with dissonance, frustration, anxiety, anger, stress, sadness, panic, and other negative emotions or mood disorders
2. Restorative
Helps the alcoholic to restore his or her self-confidence and self-esteem, also as a man or a woman (especially when coupled with a body image issue)
3. Disinhibitory
By lowering inhibitions, alcohol legitimizes narcissistic traits and behaviors like: lack of empathy, extreme selfishness, a sense of entitlement.
Allows the alcoholic to express his or her repressed promiscuity and aggression: traits that s/he find ego-dystonic (traits that s/he dislikes or find denigrating or unacceptable)
Alcohol renders the alcoholic much more sociable, grandiose, and sociopathic: s/he becomes volubly defiant, hates authority figures, feels in control or in charge of others and of the situation, capable of anything s/he sets his/her mind to, irresistibly attractive, charming, or charismatic, and unfettered by rules or social mores: "I can do whatever the hell I want to, no one will tell me what to do"
As a result of these cognitive and emotional changes, the drunk person engages in reckless behaviors like unprotected sex with a stranger, or compulsive shopping or gambling.
4. Instrumental
Allows the alcoholic to accomplish goals (become goal-oriented) that s/he would never even try when sober.
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